Ignore the hype and buy cards you like, not cards you think you’re supposed to like
Set a rough budget and stick to it
Find a goal that makes you happy and fits within what you’re willing to spend
19 Likes
I would say start small. The amount of people who come in and drop over $1k off the rip is alarming to me.
Collect what you like
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Money’s a ladder and nostalgia’s the bait,
Turn a kid with a binder into a mogul of fate.
I’ll spell it out simple so the message sticks,
This is market manipulation for Poké fanatics.
Kid rips packs on the living room floor,
But the price of the singles? They tank when there’s more.
Supply floods in, demand starts to bend,
Everyone’s a collector till the margins end.
Step one, create artificial rarity.
Pokémon Center stamp adds instant clarity.
Limit allocations, “sold out” in a flash,
Now screenshots circulate and everybody wants to stash.
Step two, desire. Manufacture obsession.
Ten out of ten? That’s divine intervention.
Black Label gold, pristine in a case,
Edges so sharp they could cut market space.
If you ain’t got a slab with a flawless report,
You’re just background noise in a collector’s sport.
Step three, consolidate power.
Buy the booster boxes hour by hour.
Stack them sealed in a temperature vault,
Blame “long-term vision” for hoarding by default.
Step four, expand the brand.
Merch on hand.
Content planned.
Influencers opening cases on command.
Step five, diversify the play.
Why just ETBs? Go vintage W stamp, too.
Why stop there? Japanese promos,
Limited runs, exclusive logos.
Step six, sell hope.
Sell hype.
Sell “population low” as a way of life.
Sell fear of missing out in a Discord chat,
Sell the dream that cardboard can outpace fiat.
Step seven, accelerate.
Preorder caps at EB? Navigate.
Multiple accounts, multiple drops,
If the system has cracks, then climb to the top.
Step eight, smile wide for the stream,
“It’s for the community” becomes the theme.
But truth gets bent when the margins inflate,
Scarcity tastes good when it’s served on a plate.
Step nine, polarize the base.
“Investors ruin it!” floods the space.
Doesn’t matter if they curse your name,
They’re still tracking sealed in the same money game.
Step ten, applause.
Vault full of boxes behind closed doors.
Hero or villain depends on the lore,
But you still sell cardboard like it’s rare ore.
(Sung in the style of Ren - Money Game Pt2)
7 Likes
Im starting an entire thread on here. You guys are paronoid. Go touch grass.
buy what you like dont be affraid to collect lower grades of cards especially for vintage as end of the day you still get the card and that’s what is most important imo, I know I had to adjust what grades I collected since coming back into the hobby last year! Maybe start with building a binder as this is fun and rewarding and overtime shift into collecting slabs once you gain a sense of what cards you enjoy and the direction you want to head in! Even for 1st edition base you can buy most cards outside of the top 3 mid to low grade for under $500 which isnt to bad given its the most prestigious set. Also, overtime you can roll into higher grades once you have built a strong foundation if that is something you wanted- for example I have multiple psa 6 4th print venusuars that I brought for fairly cheap and now plan to sell them to upgrade into a psa 8 version this way I didnt need to splash out for a psa 8 to begin with and can use my collection to leverage the upfront cost. Try not to get caught up in chasing high grades and putting yourself at financial strain as from my experience this is often not sustainable and can create pressure which is not fun! take your time and enjoy the process which is best for longevity and likely will be the most successful approach in this hobby. Time in the market trumps timing the market!
Also as a side note treat your special items as museum pieces! back in 2016-2018 I owned lots of great cards such as a psa 8 1st ed charizard, psa 9 gd ray, both sealed mario boxes, 1st ed jungle booster box, psa 10 shadowless blastosie and at the time the museum pieces were the stuff north of 10k like a psa 10 shadowless charizard or your high end trophy cards and because my stuff were in low thousands I was like ahh it could be better but fast forward to today these are now treated as very high end museum like pieces. So its healthy to appreciate what you have and humble yourself and shut out the noise
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Pick a different hobby
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like taytays perchance 
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Advice? Forget investment factors just gather those ‘noice’ bits that appeal, no matter how dinky, unpopular or ‘left field’ to others.. they don’t matter. Binder stuff, get diversified. Enjoy the community and just be you.
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Spend your money how it’ll make you happy.
Don’t spend big $ unless you’re prepared for it to go to 0.
Be extremely wary of the content you consume and always defer to your better judgement. Don’t take everything at face value. Many people are trying to make money, not friends.
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be happy with less
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A few people ITT are a bit down in the dumps but to be very blunt most of the oldheads on here also thought everything were overpriced in 2023/2024 and it turns out prices have now multipled on just about everything since then rofl (love you all, but it’s true)
Here’s some advice I’d give that hopefully doesn’t age horribly:
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No one actually knows what will happen to the pokemon market for certain at any point in time. That includes the biggest and most established eBay sellers /vendors/or collectors. If you see someone speaking in absolutes all the time, run.
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Before you ever buy something you consider expensive, first equip yourself with as much knowledge about the market as possible. Don’t buy big at first unless your dummy rich and getting burnt won’t matter rofl. Most of the latter points below pertain to how to learn how this stuff works.
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Learn how to look up price history, learn about how much a card is in different languages and their raw version (if you’re looking to buy a slab, and vice versa tbh). Track the price of the sealed product that the slab/card you want comes from as well for a good indicator of how the card’s value might change (for vintage at least).
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Learn how to track the different marketplaces that exist online (eBay, fanatics, IG, goldin, WN etc). Apps like Card Ladder, Alt and Collectr are good for this, but they get shit wrong a lot too so cross validate or go to the source themselves.
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Do go to card shows. If you have a wide knowledge base on a lot of cool cards, you can find good deals there from people that are more focused on following the latest hype that their fellow vendor friend is bragging about because those guys trade for anything 80-90 percent market based on what CardLadder or Alt says. They play short term margins which you can utilize to your own advantage for getting the neat things you want in your collection. For example, One Piece was hyped af in December last year and I was able to trade a few slabs I had of that for some neat vintage cards that I’ve wanted for a while that have now gone cray cray. Trust me on that lol.
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Don’t corner yourself on having to ONLY and EXCLUSIVELY buying PSA 10 English slabs. Raw collecting is a great way of learning about the plethora of cool cards that are out there. Other grading companies are cool too. Japanese cards look better than English cards a lot of the time and have plenty of exclusive arts.
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Pop matters in this hobby. Franky the law of supply and demand will always matter when there’s a market involved lol. When a certain slice of the hobby gets hot, the things there are less of will have more demand from the people chasing the hype at that time. If there’s a good deal you see for something that is low pop relative to the era and are willing to hold for a bit, there’s a good chance it will be a great trading piece in the future
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Buy the card, not the slab if you’re not just in it for the
. All 10s are not the same, and no, new certs are not always the cleaner ones rofl -
Every Pokemon is someone’s favorite. Plenty of old farts bash the new gen game every single time they come out, but the truth is that the new games always introduce a huge amount of new pokemon fans that like those characters the most. Being a fan of the franchise as a whole will be a strong plus long term
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This will probably be a bit controversial but if you’re in this just to collect, I personally don’t think that you should ever get into the vending or online sales game. It seems to make people pretty jaded and makes the actual concept of collecting a secondary aspect to the hobby. Sure, money is nice and frankly it’s the most important thing if you decide that it’s what will feed your family, but everyone I’ve encountered that have that side to this simply don’t enjoy the hobby the same way.
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Definitely consider buying singles, don’t overspend and if you can, wait 6 months before starting.
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You don’t always need the newest and shiniest thing.
While yes many things are inflated at the moment, there are wonderful cards to be had for very cheap.
Japanese art rares are an excellent way to build a great looking yet inexpensive collection to start.
Arranging themed binder pages which appeal to your personal tastes adds another dimension to this hobby, which at times feels more like a money spending simulator.
Ripping packs is fun, but singles is how you can truly build a focused, personal collection that you can take pride in!
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Play some games, watch Pokemon movies and few episodes of the anime first, and it’ll give you a better appreciation of the cards prior to collecting them.
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tl; dr: dump one piece for pokes got it 
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i can never imagine that there are ppl today who collect pokes but have never played the game boy games or watched the anime in the late 90s/early 2000s holy shit 
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Advice for a collector starting in 2026:
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Collect what gives you joy. If that is a single Pokémon, a single typing, one set or one type of printing it does not matter. If it doesn’t make you happy pulling a card you need, or happy when you finally able to purchase a card you look for; you’re doing it wrong.
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Understand how to properly take care of your cards. How to sleeve up, what binders to use and which not. Learn the difference between top loaders and semi rigid.
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Slabs and graded cards are overrated and a very bad point to start off from. Ignore everything social media force feeds you on them. If you take care of your cards their value will stay the same or even go up no matter what.
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Sealed product is a mega niche and unless you really don’t want to collect in the first place this is your start point.
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Everything costs money, card prices/values are based on whatever people want to pay for it.
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Binder collections are the future
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The most important advice I would give is to really take the time to find out what you truly enjoy and want to collect. When I came back into Pokémon collecting a couple of years ago, I was completely overwhelmed. Vintage had that huge nostalgia factor, many modern cards looked great, it was hard to keep up with new releases, hard to find out when is a good time to buy and when something is clearly overpriced.
When you found what you want to collect, educate yourself at least a little bit on it, so you know when something is sold for a fair price, when something is overpriced and when something is too good to be true.
Also try to avoid all the noise out there. While in the beginning I was watching a lot of Pokèmon YouTubers, I can count it on two hands how many videos of Pokémon YouTubers I’ve watched in the past two years. This also helped a lot with not getting overwhelmed.
6 Likes